Too much of a good thing: Curvilinear effect of positive affect on proactive behaviors

• Author: Gretchen Spreitzer,Charlotte Fritz,Chak Fu Lam
• Date: 01 May 2014
• Published date: 01 May 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/job.1906

Too much of a good thing: Curvilinear effect of

positive affect on proactive behaviors

CHAK FU LAM

1

*, GRETCHEN SPREITZER

2

AND CHARLOTTE FRITZ

3

1

Suffolk University, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

2

University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.

3

Portland State University, Portland, Oregon, U.S.A.

Summary Current organizational theory and research affirm the beneficial effects of experiencing positive affect at

work. In recent years, researchers have begun to question the popular notion that the more positive affect

at work, the better—thatmore positive affect is desirable for work-related outcomes.In this article, we propose

a rationalefor why more positive affectmay not be better for proactivebehaviors at work. Findingsfrom two field

studiesusing two unique data sourcesdemonstrate support forour hypothesis, suggestingthat intermediate levels

of positive affect are mostbeneficial for proactive behaviors.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Keywords: positive affect; proactive behaviors

Introduction

In today’s fast-paced, uncertain, and increasingly interdependent world (Grant & Parker, 2011), work organizations

rely on their employees to be proactive in enabling the organization to run more effectively (Frese, Fay, Hilburger,

Leng, & Tag, 1997). Organizations need employees to take initiatives and be proactive, no matter their place in the

organizational hierarchy. By proactive behaviors, we refer to “anticipatory actions that employees take to impact

themselves and/or their environments”(Grant & Ashford, 2008, p. 4), which include behaviors such as feedback

seeking (Ashford & Cummings, 1983), voice (Van Dyne & LePine, 1998), issue selling (Dutton & Ashford,

1993), and taking charge (Morrison & Phelps, 1999; Crant, 2000; Frese & Fay, 2001; Griffin, Neal, & Parker,

2007; Parker, Williams, & Turnver, 2006). The benefits of proactive behaviors on individual and group-level perfor-

mance are well-documented (Parker & Wu, in press). For example, employees with higher proactive personality are

more likely to be promoted (Seibert, Kraimer, & Crant, 2001), and those who proactively seek information and build

relationships with superiors are more likely to perform better and be more satisfied at work (Ashford & Black, 1996).

In terms of organizational outcomes, proactive individuals who speak up to benefit their customers are perceived to

offer better service (Lam & Mayer, in press), and proactive planning by business owners is associated with greater

business size and objective evaluation of business success (Frese et al., 2007).

Given that proactive behaviors matter to individual and organizational performance, scholars have focused on ex-

amining factors that contribute to proactive behaviors at work. One antecedent particularly important for proactive

behaviors appears to be the experience of positive affect at work (Bindl, Parker, Totterdell, & Hagger-Johnson,

2012; Parker, Bindl, & Strauss, 2010; Parker & Wu, in press). For example, Den Hartog and Belschak (2007) found

a positive relationship between positive trait affect and personal initiative. Likewise, Fritz and Sonnentag (2009)

found support for a positive relationship between positive affect during the workday and self-reported proactive be-

haviors on the same day and the following workday. In a recent day-level study, Bissing-Olson, Iyer, Fielding, and

Zacher (2013) found that daily positive affect is associated with more pro-environmental proactive behaviors for

those who generally do not hold a positive pro-environmental attitude.

*Correspondence to: Chak Fu Lam, Suffolk University, 8 Ashburton Pl, Boston, MA 02108, U.S.A. E-mail: cflam@suffolk.edu

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Received 21 March 2013

Revised 21 September 2013, Accepted 04 October 2013

Journal of Organizational Behavior, J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 530–546 (2014)

Published online 6 November 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/job.1906

Research Article

In this article, we seek to examine the relationship between positive affect and proactive behaviors in more depths.

Specifically, we build on recent psychological research that suggests that “people can get too much of a good thing,

experiencing a downturn in good outcomes with disproportionate levels of positive emotion”(Fredrickson, 2013,

July 15). Prior research has found such a nonlinear relationship between positive emotions and political participation

(Oishi, Diener, & Lucas, 2007), risky behaviors (Martin et al., 2002), accumulated relational resources (Waugh &

Fredrickson, 2006), and creativity (Rego, Sousa, Marqes, & Cunah, 2012). To build on the idea of no such thing

as “an unmitigated good,”Grant and Schwartz (2011, p. 62) suggested that future research needs to identify the

prevalence and inflection points of these nonlinear effects. Drawing from broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson,

2001) and affect-as-information theory (Carver, 2003; Schwarz & Clore, 1983, 2003), we posit that the relationship

between positive affect and proactive behaviors may be more complicated than a simple linear relationship.

Specifically, we hypothesize that too little or too much positive affect can hamper proactive behaviors at work

(i.e., a curvilinear relationship). In the following sections, we develop our hypothesis and then draw on two samples

to test them empirically.

Theory and Hypothesis

In recent reviews of the proactivity literature, Parker and colleagues (Parker et al., 2010; Parker & Wu, in press)

proposed three motivational pathways to explain why employees engage in proactive behaviors. The first

pathway, called th e “can do”pathway, concerns employees’feeling of efficacy to engage in proactive behaviors.

Parker and colleagues asserted that proactive behaviors are more likely when employees believe that they are

capable of influencing their work environment, to cope with potential setbacks, and to perceive a high likelihood

of success in engaging in proactive behaviors (Ashford, Rothbard, Piderit, & Dutton, 1998; Raub & Liao, 2012).

Supporting this view, scholars have shown that the experience of “can do”is a key determinant of proactive

behaviors (Parker et al., 2006; Stajkovic & Luthans, 1998). The second pathway is called the “reason to”pathway.

In order for employees to engage in proactive behaviors, they must perceive that there are reasons to engage in

these behaviors (Morrison & Phelps, 1999; Parker, Wall, & Jackson, 1997; Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008).

Research has shown that those who are dedicated to benefit the recipients of proactive behaviors (e.g., peers,

customers, work units, or organization) are more likely to engage in proactive behaviors (Lam & Mayer, in press;

Tangirala & Ramanujam, 2008). Thus, the importance of these two motivational pathways is well-established

(Parker & Wu, in press).

Whereas the “can do”and “reason to”pathways are cognitive mechanisms through which employees are moti-

vated to engage in proactive behaviors, the third motivational pathway, termed the “energized to”pathway, is an

affective mechanism that has garnered attention only in recent years.Parker and colleagues suggest that the experience

of positive affectis particularly conducive to proactive behaviors,because positive affect “expandsthinking and results

in more flexible cognitive processes”and “invokes feelings of energy”(Parker & Wu, in press,p. 6). In support of this

assertion, Den Hartog and Belschak reported that hospital employees who exhibited a greater level of positive affect

were more likely to engage in proactive behaviors, and Fritz and Sonnentag (2009) showed that positive affect during

the day was positively associated with proactive behavior on the same and thefollowing day. Perhaps the most impor-

tant evidence thatpositive affect is linearly and positively associatedwith proactive behavior is reportedby Bindl et al.

(2012), who surveyed 225 employees working for a U.K. multinational organization in a call center and 250 first year

undergraduatestudents in a British medical school. Across both studies,the authors found that positive affectwas pos-

itively associated with all elements of self-reported proactivity: envisioning the future, planning to execute change,

enacting change, and reflecting changes that have occurred. In sum, these research studies seem to suggest that the re-

lationship between positive affect and proactive behaviors is a positive and linear one.

In this article, we suggest that the relationship between positive affect at work and proactive behaviors may not be

so simple, as past research has neglected a possible curvilinear relationship. Two theories help build our argument.

The first theory of positive affect is the broaden-and-build theory (Fredrickson, 1998, 2001), which suggests that

POSITIVE AFFECT AND PROACTIVE BEHAVIORS 531

Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. J. Organiz. Behav. 35, 530–546 (2014)

DOI: 10.1002/job